Using the P90/P10 Index to Measure US Inequality Trends with Current Population Survey Data: A View from Inside the Census Bureau Vaults*

Stephen Jenkins, Shuaizhang Feng and Richard Burkhauser

No 72, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: The March Current Population Survey (CPS) is the primary data source for estimation of levels and trends in labor earnings and income inequality in the USA. Time-inconsistency problems related to top coding in theses data have led many researchers to use the ratio of the 90th and 10th percentiles of these distributions (P90/P10) rather than a more traditional summary measure of inequality. With access to public use and restricted-access internal CPS data, and bounding methods, we show that using P90/P10 does not completely obviate time-inconsistency problems, especially for household income inequality trends. Using internal data, we create consistent cell mean values for all top-coded public use values that, when used with public use data, closely track inequality trends in labor earnings and household income using internal data. But estimates of longer-term inequality trends with these corrected data based on P90/P10 differ from those based on the Gini coefficient. The choice of inequality measure matters.

Keywords: inequality; income; earnings; Current Population Survey; decile ratio; Gini coefficient (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 D3 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2007-72.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: USING THE P90/P10 INDEX TO MEASURE U.S. INEQUALITY TRENDS WITH CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY DATA: A VIEW FROM INSIDE THE CENSUS BUREAU VAULTS (2009)
Working Paper: Using the P90/P10 Index to Measure U.S. Inequality Trends with Current Population Survey Data: A View From Inside the Census Bureau Vaults (2007)
Working Paper: Using the P90/P10 Index to Measure US Inequality Trends with Current Population Survey Data: A View from Inside the Census Bureau Vaults (2007)
Working Paper: Using the P90/P10 index to measure US inquality trends with current population survey data: a view from inside the Census Bureau vaults (2007)
Working Paper: Using the P90/P10 Index to Measure US Inequality Trends with Current Population Survey Data: A View from Inside the Census Bureau Vaults (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2007-72

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maria Ana Lugo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).